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Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain, but there are three main types of copyright term for historical works which cover most cases. For these three systems, newly entering the public domain today are:

Due to differing copyright laws around the world, there is no one single public domain, but there are three main types of copyright term for historical works which cover most cases. For these three systems, newly entering the public domain today are:

works by people who died in 1955, for countries with a copyright term of “life plus 70 years” (relevant in UK, most of the EU, and South America);works by people who died in 1975, for countries with a term of “life plus 50 years” (relevant to most of Africa and Asia);films and books (incl. artworks featured) published in 1929 (relevant solely to the United States).

works by people who died in 1955, for countries with a copyright term of “life plus 70 years” (relevant in UK, most of the EU, and South America);works by people who died in 1975, for countries with a term of “life plus 50 years” (relevant to most of Africa and Asia);films and books (incl. artworks featured) published in 1929 (relevant solely to the United States).

Some of you may have been following our advent-style countdown calendar which revealed day-by-day through December our highlights for these new public domain entrants. The last window was opened yesterday, and while such a format was fun for the slow reveal, for the sake of a good gorgeable list we’ve exploded the calendar out into a digestible array below. Enjoy!

Some of you may have been following our advent-style countdown calendar which revealed day-by-day through December our highlights for these new public domain entrants. The last window was opened yesterday, and while such a format was fun for the slow reveal, for the sake of a good gorgeable list we’ve exploded the calendar out into a digestible array below. Enjoy!

Arthur Ransome – Swallows and AmazonsSwallows and Amazons is a children’s adventure novel by English author Arthur Ransome. It is the first book in the Swallows and Amazons series, followed by Swallowdale.Set in the summer of 1929 in England’s Lake District, the book relates the outdoor adventures and play of two families of children. These involve sailing, camping, fishing, exploration and piracy. The Walker children (John, Susan, Titty and Roger) are staying at a farm near a lake in the Lake District of England, during the school holidays. They sail a borrowed dinghy named Swallow and meet the Blackett children (Nancy and Peggy), who sail a dinghy named Amazon. When the children meet, they agree to join forces against a common enemy – the Blacketts’ uncle Jim Turner whom they call “Captain Flint” (after the parrot in Treasure Island).The book was inspired by a summer spent by Ransome teaching the children of his friends, the Altounyans, to sail. At the time, Ransome had been working as a journalist with the Manchester Guardian, but decided to become a full-time author rather than go abroad as a foreign correspondent. Three of the Altounyan children’s names are adopted directly for the Walker family. However, later in life Ransome tried to downplay the Altounyan connections, changing the initial dedication of Swallows and Amazons and writing a new foreword which gave other sources. (Wikipedia)Read on Faded Page and Standard Books

Nan Shepherd – The WeatherhouseThe Weatherhouse is the second novel by Anna “Nan” Shepherd, a Scottish modernist writer and poet. The novel concerns interactions between people in a small rural Scottish community. It belongs to the great line of Scottish fiction dealing with the complex interactions of small communities, and especially the community of women — a touching and hilarious network of mothers, daughters, spinsters and widows. It is also a striking meditation on the nature of truth, the power of human longing and the mystery of being.Shepherd published three works of fiction. Her short non-fiction book The Living Mountain, inspired by her love for hillwalking, is the book for which she is best known and has been quoted as an influence by prominent nature writers. The landscape and weather of this area play a major role in her novels and provide a focus for her poetry.Shepherd’s fiction brings out the sharp conflict between the demands of tradition and the pull of modernity, particularly in women’s lives. All three novels assign a major role to the landscape and weather in small northern Scottish communities they describe. (Wikipedia)

Hermann Hesse – Narcissus and GoldmundNarcissus and Goldmund (in German, Narziß und Goldmund), also published in English as Death and the Lover, is a novel written by the German-Swiss author Hermann Hesse. At its publication, it was considered Hesse’s literary triumph.The novel is the story of a young man, Goldmund (German for “Gold mouth”), who wanders aimlessly throughout Medieval Germany after leaving a Catholic monastery school in search of what could be described as “the meaning of life”. With the help of Narcissus, a gifted young teacher, and following an epiphanic experience with a beautiful Gypsy woman, Goldmund leaves the monastery and embarks on a wandering existence. He has numerous love affairs, studies art, and encounters human existence at its ugliest when the Black Death devastates the region. Eventually, he is reunited with his friend Narcissus, now an abbot.Like most of Hesse’s works, the main theme of this book is the wanderer’s struggle to find himself, as well as the Jungian union of polar opposites (Mysterium Coniunctionis). Goldmund represents nature and the “feminine conscious mind” (but also anima, a man’s unconscious), while Narcissus represents science and logic and God and the “masculine conscious mind” (but also animus, a woman’s unconscious).A film adaptation, directed by the Austrian Oscar-winning director Stefan Ruzowitzky, was released in 2020. (Wikipedia)

All Quiet on the Western Front (1930 film)All Quiet on the Western Front is a 1930 American pre-Code epic anti-war film based on the 1929 novel of the same name by German novelist Erich Maria Remarque. Directed by Lewis Milestone, it stars Lew Ayres, Louis Wolheim, John Wray, Slim Summerville, and William Bakewell.The movie follows a group of German students moved to enlist in the army as part of the new 2nd Company. Their romantic delusions are quickly shattered during their brief but rigorous training under the abusive Sergeant Himmelstoss. After being sent to the Western Front, their idealism is destroyed by the harsh realities of combat.Considered a realistic and harrowing account of warfare in World War I, the film opened to wide acclaim in the United States and made the American Film Institute’s first 100 Years… 100 Movies list in 1997. (Wikipedia)Read on Faded Page

Evelyn Waugh – Vile BodiesVile Bodies is the second novel by Arthur Evelyn St. John Waugh, an English writer of novels, biographies, and travel books, and a prolific journalist and book reviewer. It satirises London’s post–First World War “bright young things” — a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in London — and the press coverage around them. Waugh originally considered the title Bright Young Things but changed it; the published title echoes a narrator’s remark on crowds and parties: “Those vile bodies”.The novel follows a vivid assortment of characters, among them the struggling writer Adam Fenwick-Symes and the glamorous, aristocratic Nina Blount, who hunt fast and furiously for ever greater sensations and the hedonistic fulfillment of their desires. Waugh’s acidly funny satire reveals the darkness and vulnerability beneath the sparkling surface of the high life.The book shifts in tone from light-hearted romp to bleak desolation (Waugh himself later attributed it to the breakdown of his first marriage halfway through the book’s composition). Critics have noted the novel’s fragmented scenes, jump-cuts, and telephone dialogue, often linking its method to cinema and to modernist effects. Some have defended the novel’s downbeat ending as a poetically just reversal of the conventions of comic romance.David Bowie cited the novel as the primary influence in writing his song “Aladdin Sane”, and a film adaptation, written and directed by Stephen Fry, was released in 2003. (Wikipedia)Read on Faded Page and Standard Books

Margaret Ayer Barnes – Years of GraceYears of Grace is the first book by the American playwright, novelist, and short-story writer Margaret Ayer Barnes. It won the Pulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1931.The story, beginning in the 1890s and continuing into the 1930s, chronicles the life of Jane Ward Carver from her teens to age 54. This novel follows many of the same themes as Barnes’s other works. Centering on the social manners of upper middle class society, her female protagonists are often traditionalists, struggling to uphold conventional morality in the face of changing social climates. Barnes’s alma mater Bryn Mawr College, along with the characters of college presidents M. Carey Thomas and Marion Park, figure prominently in this work.The New York Times commented that “this story of the death of an old order and the birth of a new one, of the perpetually renewed conflict between succeeding generations… holds the reader’s attention to the end.” Despite the success of Years of Grace, it is not Barnes’s best-known work; that honor belongs to Dishonored Lady, a play she co-wrote with Edward Sheldon, which was adapted twice into film. (Wikipedia)Read free ebook through Standard Books

Agatha Christie – The Murder at the VicarageThe Murder at the Vicarage is a work of detective fiction by the British writer Agatha Christie. It is the first novel to feature the character of Miss Marple and her village of St Mary Mead (characters that had previously appeared in short stories).The story is set in the quiet English village of St Mary Mead, where life is seemingly peaceful until Colonel Protheroe, the local magistrate and a widely disliked man, is found shot dead in the vicar’s study. The vicar, Leonard Clement, is the narrator of the story. Just before the murder, he had remarked that “anyone who murdered Colonel Protheroe would be doing the world a service” — a comment that comes back to haunt him.Several suspects quickly emerge, as well as Miss Marple, who proves, though she appears at first as a nosy old spinster, to have unmatched observational skills and a deep understanding of human nature. (Wikipedia)Read free ebook through Standard Books